TOKYO Asian shares hit 21-month highs on Tuesday while the dollar and U.S. bond yields were on the backfoot on the prospect of a less hawkish than previously expected Federal Reserve policy trajectory. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS rose 0.3 percent in its eighth consecutive day of gains with tech-heavy Seoul and Taipei shares .KS11 .TWII hitting two-year highs while Hong Kong’s Hang […]
Authored by Melkulangara Bhadrakumar via The Strategic Culture Foundation, The common thread running through the two major ‘hot spots’ in the Middle East today – the conflicts in Syria and Libya – is undoubtedly the threat to international security from the extremist groups operating in these theatres. Therefore, Syria and Libya become test cases of the efficacy of the international community – Russia and the United States […]
Dutch and European policymakers should do more to protect media users’ privacy instead of leaving the matter entirely to data protection law and data protection authorities, recommend privacy experts. (via WSJ)
Rhetoric has recently trumped reality. It has become a misconceived bit of common “knowledge” that the United States of America is a bastion of free trade. Little could be further from the truth. The “freest” nation on earth, as we are taught to believe, imposes a staggering number of tariffs, import and export bans, sanctions and embargoes. Yet somehow “free trade” is blamed for the financial ills […]
ATHENS Greek police intercepted eight suspect packages at a postal sorting centre in Athens on Monday, after the dispatch of booby-trapped deliveries to the International Monetary Fund in Paris and the German Finance Ministry. Authorities were on the lookout after the two packages laced with gunpowder slipped through checks last week. A Greek urban guerrilla group that sent letter bombs to foreign embassies in Athens and European […]
By Julia Fioretti | BRUSSELS BRUSSELS The European Commission wants to scrap restrictions placed on EU airlines leasing planes and crew from U.S. carriers, to resolve a long-standing dispute between the two sides. The leasing of crewed planes from another airline – known as wet-leasing – is a common practice in the industry and the 10-year-old EU-U.S. Open Skies aviation services agreement envisaged a liberal regime for […]
LONDON/BRUSSELS Prime Minister Theresa May will trigger Britain’s divorce proceedings with the European Union on March 29, launching two years of negotiations that will reshape the future of the country and Europe. May’s government said her permanent envoy to the EU had informed European Council President Donald Tusk of the date when Britain intends to invoke Article 50 of its Lisbon Treaty – the mechanism for starting […]
When the European Commission published a “white paper” this month on the future of Europe, something was missing. Two weeks earlier Pierre Moscovici, EU economy commissioner, had told an audience in Athens that the blueprint would include “ambitious ideas” for “deepening of the economic and monetary union” — code for overhauling the system of budget rules and policy co-ordination that underpins the single currency. Instead, amid warnings […]
Monday 06:10 GMT Overview The US dollar continued its slide in the wake of last week’s widely expected decision by the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates, while Asian stocks were mixed. European bourses are expected to open with a soft bias, with spreadbetters predicting the UK’s FTSE 100 will be unchanged but Germany’s Dax to drop 30 points to 12,065. US index futures suggest the S&P […]
By Yann Le Guernigou and Gus Trompiz | PARIS PARIS Police questioned and then released relatives of a man shot dead at a Paris airport, as investigators sought clues on why he attacked an army patrol in an incident that has pushed security to the forefront of France’s election campaign. Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said late on Saturday that the man, named as 39-year-old Ziyed Ben Belgacem, […]
By Anthony Boadle | BRASILIA BRASILIA President Michel Temer, confronting a corruption scandal tarnishing Brazil’s lucrative meat industry, met on Sunday with executives and foreign diplomats to assuage health concerns tarnishing a sector responsible for $12 billion in annual exports. The hastily called meetings, following raids by police on Friday investigating whether companies paid bribes to conceal unsanitary conditions at meatpackers, come as Temer works to protect […]
By Nichola Saminather | SINGAPORE SINGAPORE Asian stocks were mixed on Monday in thin trade, following Wall Street’s declines and the G20’s decision to drop a pledge to avoid trade protectionism, while the Federal Reserve’s less hawkish-than-expected comments continued to drag the dollar lower. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS added 0.1 percent. Chinese shares .SSEC added 0.2 percent, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng […]
ABU DHABI // The UAE has summoned the Swiss ambassador over a statement made by her country against Bahrain. Dr Abdulrahim Al Awadhi, assistant minister for legal affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, summoned Maya Tissafi, Ambassador of Switzerland to the UAE. Sheikh Mohammed bin Maktoum, director of the ministry’s European Affairs Department, also attended. Dr Al Awadhi expressed the UAE’s denunciation of […]
By Michelle Martin | SAARBRUECKEN, Germany SAARBRUECKEN, Germany When voters head to the polls in the German state of Saarland later this month, they are likely to deliver an upset to Chancellor Angela Merkel that could be a foretaste of September’s national election. One of Germany’s smallest states, Saarland is – like federal Germany – currently governed by a ‘grand coalition’ of Merkel’s conservatives and the Social […]
Tim Byrnes is an unlikely symbol of China’s bid to become the world’s high-tech superpower. For a start he is Australian. Yet the 39-year-old quantum physicist’s decision to swap a research post in New York for Shanghai goes some way to explaining the lengths to which Beijing is going in its efforts to upend the world order. “Quantum physics is very strong in China,” says Mr Byrnes. […]
It has been almost five years to the day since Mahmood Hashim Al Kooheji took over as head of Bahrain’s sovereign wealth fund, Mumtalakat, restructuring several investment interests and making other changes to whip the fund into shape after years of losses. It followed a term at Gulf Air in which he managed the national carrier’s controversial restructure that saw 15 percent of its staff, around 600 […]
By Michelle Martin | BERLIN BERLIN Germany’s Social Democrats (SPD) on Sunday formally endorsed former European Parliament President Martin Schulz as their leader and challenger to Chancellor Angela Merkel in what is set to be a tightly contested national election in September. The SPD has undergone a revival since nominating Schulz in late January, gaining around 10 points in opinion polls and signing up thousands of new […]
By Michael Nienaber | BADEN-BADEN BADEN-BADEN The failure of the world’s financial leaders to agree on resisting protectionism and support free trade marks a setback in the G20 process and poses a risk for growth of export-driven economies such as host Germany, economists said on Sunday. Acquiescing to an increasingly protectionist United States after a two-day meeting in the German town of Baden-Baden, the finance ministers and […]
Here are the big questions for markets and investors as a new trading week beckons. Does a measured Fed risk being left behind by inflation?After a barrage of central bank meetings, Brexit angst and the first major European election for the year, market volatility across bonds and equities remains quiescent. Having been primed for a more aggressive Federal Reserve and wary of polls being wrong ahead of […]
An enormous young planet approximately 300 light-years from Earth has given astrophysicists a rare glimpse into planetary evolution. The planet, known as HD 106906b, was discovered in 2014 by a team of scientists from the U.S., the Netherlands and Italy. It is 11 times the mass of Jupiter and is extremely young by celestial standards — not more than 13 million years old, compared with our solar […]
PARIS Eleven people have received the 500 endorsements from elected officials needed in order to run in the first round of the French presidential elections on April 23. The top two will qualify for a run-off on May 7. The Constitutional Council announced the final list on Saturday. NATALIE ARTHAUD, 46, WORKERS’ STRUGGLE Economics professor who runs for the far-left Trotskyist party. Wants the voice of the […]
Finance ministers from the world’s biggest economies have dropped pledges to renounce protectionism in a meeting marked by tension over trade between the US and China. G20 finance ministers meeting in the German resort town of Baden-Baden noted the importance of trade to the global economy, but dropped tougher language from last year that vowed to “resist all forms of protectionism”. We have reached an impasse The […]
Photo Part of Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system in the Golan Heights on Friday. Israeli officials said a separate system, Arrow, had intercepted a missile that appeared to be heading toward Israeli territory. Credit Atef Safadi/European Pressphoto Agency JERUSALEM — The Syrian armed forces fired antiaircraft missiles at Israeli warplanes that had struck targets deep in Syria early Friday, in what appeared to be the most […]
Prices for bonds sold by the Netherlands and France fell on Thursday, reversing early gains as Dutch voters rejected rightwing populism and opted for the status quo in an election regarded as a litmus test for Europe’s political future. Dutch and French sovereign debt initially outperformed German Bunds as investors reacted to news that the anti-EU populist Geert Wilders’ PVV party had fallen short of expectations. However, […]
